Looking backwards for our energy future

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The Howard Government has had nearly a decade to develop a balanced, sustainable and truly long-term response to the immense challenge of climate change. That is what the white paper, Saving Australia's Energy Future, that Prime Minister John Howard delivered yesterday is supposed to be. It is a big package, with big implications, but we doubt it will convince voters that the Government is capable of making up for lost time in meeting its obligations to limit and manage climate change. Unsurprisingly, it continues to stand outside the Kyoto tent, in an increasingly lonely pairing with the US. While the Government insists it will meet its Kyoto targets, industry emissions have soared over the past decade, which is to be expected while most measures remain voluntary. (A new requirement for public audits of big energy users every five years is a notable exception.) The package's component policies are not devoid of merit; the problem is that the Government opts so lopsidedly for fossil fuels as Australia's "energy future". Consider yesterday's announcement and look where the money is going: the funding betrays an underlying thinking about energy and the economy that is, to coin a phrase, so last century. The clear assumption is that centuries-old dirty fossil fuels such as oil (which is increasingly scarce and costly) and coal should not and will not give way any time soon to clean energy sources such as the emerging technology of hydrogen power, as well as solar, wind and tidal power.

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Symptomatic of this reluctance to wean the nation off fossil fuels is the decision to cut excise on diesel and heating fuels for all off-road business use, with the fuels to be excise-free from July 2012 at a cost of $1.5 billion. As a sweetener to industry, this dwarfs the $134 million allocated to develop renewable energy sources - although $75 million for the "Solar Cities" project will promote awareness of Australia's most plentiful renewable resource. The Government has also refused to increase its derisory mandatory target for renewable energy use - despite a Government-commissioned review finding an increase to at least 5 per cent was needed to create a sustainable market. (Some big economies - California, Germany and Britain - are aiming for 20 per cent by 2020.) Nor is there a long-term national greenhouse emissions target. As its policy centrepiece, the Government is offering $500 million, to be matched by $1 billion from the private sector, for industry to develop low-emission technology, including both fossil-fuel and renewable energy. But much of it is earmarked for the untested approach of geosequestration, the pumping of greenhouse emissions deep underground. Investigating the potential of new technology to reduce or contain emissions from dirty but abundant coal reserves makes sense, but the Government should not build its climate-change policies around hopes of finding a "magic bullet" to extend Australia's unhealthy dependence on fossil fuels. However one dresses it up, a new, improved dinosaur is still a dinosaur.